Title: The Devil to Pay
Setting: AU Post-NFA. Spike’s back, Buffy knows about it, and they are in San Francisco. Not comics-compliant.
Rating: PG-13 for smokin’, drinkin’, and implied casual smexytimes
Words: 493
Note: Angsty Pre- and Post-Spuffy. I guess you could call it Inter-Spuffy. Setting is modeled on my very favorite bar in the whole world, which is notably NOT in San Francisco and has a train station instead of a trolley stop.

***

It’s after last call and Buffy’s done wiping down the counters for the last time and she’s dragged the black garbage bag full of empties out to the dumpster without ripping it for once. She’s standing outside the now-locked door, the fence around the patio rough through the back of her little black tank top. She’s watching the moths make drunken circles as they veer closer and closer to the lights in the parking lot, listening to the man standing with her as he talks about nothing, laughing in all the right places.

Spike can tell that’s she’s not really there. It’s subtle—nine months of pulling pints for tips have taught her how to seem engaged—but Spike knows her better. Knows in every sense of the word. He’s sitting in his usual spot across the street by the trolley stop, keeping out of sight, chain-smoking. She knows he’s there, and he knows she knows, but she’s defensive about it, and the one time he came into the bar the bouncer had to pull her off him. (Musclebound fellow got a broken nose for his trouble, too. This makes Spike chuckle.) Later, on her way home, she’ll walk over and say hello, call him a stalker, tell him to find something else to do, and maybe they will have a real conversation. She’ll tell him how in six months, or a year, she will have enough saved to open the martial arts school she’s been dreaming of. Or maybe she’ll get in the car with the drunken pillock she’s talking to right now. Sometimes she does that. Those nights Spike looks for something to kill.

She’s finally managed to walk away, to have her normal life, him and Dawn the Baby Watcher her only ties to the life that she had been chosen for. And he’s not the vampire he was when he used to lurk outside her window, smoking and watching, in Sunnydale. He should let go. It would be healthier for both of them. But still he watches. He can’t rid himself of hope any more than he could his shiny new soul.
Buffy follows the man to his beat-up blue Pontiac and waits while he gets in and slides over to unlock the passenger door. (Smarmy bastard can’t even open the door for his lady.) As the car glides smoothly onto the street and past the trolley station, Spike’s eyes catch Buffy’s through the window for a moment. She quickly looks away.

Spike drops his half-finished cigarette and slowly, purposefully grinds its ember out with his heel. He heads for the seedy side of town, suddenly feeling a powerful need to hunt. He wonders when he will stop letting her drive new nails into his heart, even as he knows the answer is “not ever.” When she figures out what she wants, he’ll be there.
And if, in the meantime, some idiot hurts the girl, well, he’ll be there too.